Making the referendum opaque

The military dictatorship has repressed, threatened and jailed those who oppose the military’s draft charter. The junta has tried to limit discussion of its draft.

As the referendum approaches, it is also seeking to prevent any observation of the voting. We suspect this is to prevent all claims of manipulation by the antique regime.

Recently, after waiting months for accreditation, the Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL), an election monitoring group, was refused permission to “monitor an upcoming constitutional referendum.”

Rabid yellow shirts, strident anti-democrats, the junta itself and their ideologues believe ANFREL to be a US front organization, and the US is seen as an agent of Thaksin Shinawatra (we kid you not) mainly because of declared funding sources. (Oddly, the chief anti-democratic ideologue writes for Russian-funded propaganda agencies.)

Rather than all this nonsense, the simple fact is that the junta wants no outside scrutiny of a referendum that it has been determined to fix.